FROM

It is possible that a large number of people
complaining very concertedly about Kalin's desire to revive Harlow's methods
and Bennett's project could have some positive effect. But it will take more
than only a few people calling and writing regularly; it will take many of
us. The use of maternal deprivation is a giant moral step backwards for the
university. People around the world who know what Harlow did to the baby
monkeys are appalled that such cruelty was ever allowed and that it was
allowed to continue unquestioned for so long. This remains an embarrassment
to more than a few at the university.

Maternal deprivation -- crushing a monkey’s spirit by raising him or her
without a nurturing caregiver -- was invented and promoted by UW-Madison’s
Harry Harlow and his students in the 1970s and 80s. Harlow’s experiments
with maternal deprivation are widely acknowledged as being profoundly cruel.

Now, well into the twenty-first century, UW-Madison has again embraced
the use of Harry Harlow’s cruel and controversial methods.

Recently hired experimental psychologist Alyson Joy Bennett has close
professional ties to Harlow’s protégé Stephen Suomi, advocate of the
infamous “Pit of Despair” – a device for keeping baby monkeys in profound
isolation. Bennett maternally deprives monkeys and then uses them as her
research subjects.

Monkeys experiencing these “deleterious early rearing experiences” have
abnormally high levels of anxiety and stay huddled in place. They have
pronounced cognitive and motor deficits. Emotional problems associated with
this rearing method persist into adulthood.

Another UW-Madison researcher, Affiliate Scientist at the Harlow Primate
Laboratory, Ned Kalin, has requested permission to take his decades-long
monkey fear experiments even further by frightening young maternally
deprived monkeys.

This is a giant moral step backwards and a challenge to public sentiments
and mores. The UW Madison may have hired Dr. Bennett with the expectation
that her research methods would spark public controversy. Maybe they hoped
other UW scientists like Kalin would again embrace Harlow’s cruel methods.

Bennett is a leader of Speaking of Research, a group started to "take on
animal rights groups" (SourceWatch). She is an outspoken defender of all
experimental use of animals – and understandably so given the line of
research she has chosen as her specialty.

The Alliance for Animals is asking its members and compassionate people
around the world to speak out against this revival of Harry Harlow’s cruel
methods by calling and writing Dr. Robert Streiffer, Chair of the university
oversight committee responsible for approving these experiments, and urging
him to stop them.

Isolated monkeys show severe persistent psychopathological behaviors
similar to those seen in autistic children.

The fact that human children do not develop normally without a nurturing
caregiver who is in frequent physical contact with them has been known since
the mid 1940s. The importance of this emotional bonding in children has been
universally accepted since the early 1950s.

The
critical nature and psychological importance of this bonding in rhesus
monkeys was demonstrated ad nauseam between about 1958 and 1980 by Harry
Harlow and his many students at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Harlow's and his students' maternal deprivation experiments have been
widely criticized for the suffering they caused. Even those who defend
Harlow's work sometimes say that such experiments would not be allowed
today.

In late 2011, the UW-Madison Graduate School Animal Care and Use
Committee discussed a proposed series of experiments seeking approval to
deprive infant monkeys of their mothers. You can review the minutes here.
This is an excerpt from the Closed Session Minutes of December 12, 2011:

Dr. Lindstrom asked if there has been any discussion
about the type of extreme experiments of this study. Dr. Krugner-Higby [A
lab animal veterinarian] said yes, and said that she feels the creation of
nursery-raised infant non-human primates (NHP) is severe because of what it
can do to young animals. Dr. Capuano [Primate Center attending vet] said
this type of research continues to be carried out at other NHP research
centers, but acknowledged that this type of research has not occurred at
UW-Madison since the 1980s. Dr. Lindstrom asked if this is an established
animal model for this work, and asked if separation from the mothers could
be half as long as is proposed. Dr. Krugner-Higby said the PI will say that
his lab has gone as far as they can within "normal" anxiety range and the
research needs to be carried out past that range. Dr. Capuano said that the
PI is trying to compare mother-reared animals to nursery-reared animals at a
specific developmental stage. He said that he is unsure if the ACUC has the
right to tell a PI not to do their research because the research may cause
harm. The ACUC frequently approves protocols that will have adverse effects
on animals. Dr. Krugner-Higby said the difference is in other studies of
pathogenesis (such as SIV) specific therapeutic or preventative endpoints
can be identified and reached, but in these studies endpoints are less
clear, noting the behavioral damage to the animals from this type of study
is all ready well-known. Dr. Krugner-Higby said that she has read both of
the grants listed on this protocol and neither of the grants describe the
creation of nursery-reared infants in the specific aims nor in the
Vertebrate Animal Sections. She said PI knows that he will have to inform
his program officers of this explicit proposal. Dr. Capuano said he believes
that a new grant has been submitted to cover that aspect of work. Extensive
discussion ensued. It was noted that the PI is trying to learn what is
different about the brains of young anxious NHPs in order to eventually
develop therapies to treat anxious children and adults. Dr. Capuano said the
PI over the past year has tested every NHP infant for the anxious phenotype
to identify candidate animals for his work, and again stated he is not sure
if the ACUC should question NIH-approved scientific research. Dr.
Krugner-Higby noted the request for the creation of nursery-reared infants
has not in fact been approved. Dr. Smith noted that this study is basic
science, but the hypotheses and goals are not clearly noted in the protocol.
He added that the proposed deprivation is not necessarily troubling, but it
is the fact that the PI has not explained it well in this protocol in terms
he can understand. Dr. Lindstrom agreed. Ms. Boehni asked if these NHPs
infants are purpose-bred, do the fathers of the infants need lo be accounted
for? Dr. Capuano will check with Dr. Welter." [Our emphasis throughout.]

The protocol review, begining on page 4 of the ACUC minutes, makes it
clear that the unnamed researcher plans on using a snake in part of these
severe experiments.

As far as we know, the only vivisector at the UW-Madison using a snake in
experiments on anxious monkeys is Ned H. Kalin, MD, Hedberg Professor and
Chair Department of Psychiatry University of Wisconsin School of Medicine
and Public Health. Phone: 608-263-6079.

Ned Kalin's experiments on young monkeys have primarily been an
investigation into the neurobiology of fear. Over the years he discovered a
way to identify particularly fearful young rhesus monkeys. He uses those
monkeys in his research. Briefly, he frightens them with a human intruder, a
large monkey, or a snake, then damages part of their brain with acid or
electrocautery and frightens them again to see whether there is a change in
their fearfulness; then he kills them and dissects their brain. See for
instance: The role of the central nucleus of the amygdala in mediating fear
and anxiety in the primate. Kalin NH, Shelton SE, Davidson RJ. J Neurosci.
2004.

From the Closed Session minutes above, it now appears that he "has gone
as far as [he] can within [the] "normal" anxiety range." Now he wants to use
the methods pioneered by Harry Harlow and his students -- maternal
deprivation -- to go farther, to make young monkeys even more fearful.
Kalin's experiments on monkeys are not known to have ever benefited human
children suffering from anxiety. It's unlikely that they ever will or even
could.

But why would Kalin choose this moment in time to embrace Harlow's cruel
methods of creating emotionally damaged young monkeys?

We can't know with certainty, and no one at the university is likely to
explain his deepening cruelty, but it seems more than coincidental that the
university has already approved a return to Harlow's maternal deprivation
experiments:

Dr. Allyson Joy Bennett has recently joined the UW, Madison Department of
Psychology. She has been a frequent collaborator and co-author of a number
of experiments using maternal deprivation as a "tool" to cause severe
depression and anxiety in rhesus monkeys. The senior author on most of those
papers has been Harry Harlow's star student, Stephen Suomi. For details
about Suomi's career see Rick Bogle's essays Stephen John Suomi: A Lifetime
of Sadism and Monsters: Harry Harlow and Stephen Suomi. Bennett is an
outspoken critic of efforts to stop harmful experiments on animals.

Between 2000 and 2011 Dr. Bennett co-authored seven papers with Dr.
Suomi; the last five have used maternal deprivation, which she has
characterized as "deleterious early rearing experiences." These recent
papers are titled:

It is unreasonable to assume that the UW-Madison was unaware of Dr.
Bennett's regular use of maternal deprivation. When the university hired
her, they knew she would be bringing with her the controversial experimental
methods devised by Harlow but not approved for use at the university since
the early 1980s.

Dr. Bennett removes infant monkeys from their mothers within 24 hours of
birth. Prior to the widespread use of the fast-acting anesthetic ketamine in
the monkey labs, taking a baby monkey from his or her mother required three
or four workers to hold the mother while her baby was taken from her. The
loss to the mothers must be profound.

Dr. Bennett explains:

NR [nursery reared] animals were separated from their
mothers within 24-hr of birth, moved to a neonatal nursery, and reared under
surrogate- peer-reared (n = 5; SPR) or peer-reared (n = 6; PR) conditions
[either completely alone or with one other infant] using procedures based on
those developed at the University of Wisconsin Harlow Primate Laboratory ...

Within
24 hours of birth, scientists will remove baby monkeys from their mothers
and then raise them with another infant monkey. This euphemistically termed
“peer-rearing” or “differential-rearing” or “nursery-rearing” is done to
create “models” of anxiety, “early life stress,” “early adversity,” and
“social impoverishment.” Monkeys who suffer from these “deleterious early
rearing experiences” have abnormally high levels of anxiety, reduced
movement, and cognitive and motor deficits. Emotional problems associated
with this rearing method persist into adulthood.

Dr. Bennett's project is titled LONG-TERM COGNITIVE AND NEUROANATOMICAL
CONSEQUENCES OF CHILDHOOD STRESS. An abstract is available on the NIH
RePORTER website.

What you can do:

Unfortunately, members of the public have little to no power individually
to affect the way animals are used in scientific experimentation in
Wisconsin. Last year after we discovered and exposed the fact that the
university was violating Wisconsin's anticruelty laws, the university
snapped its fingers and the Wisconsin State Legislature exempted them from
those laws.

But that doesn't mean that nothing at all can be done.

It
is possible that a large number of people complaining very concertedly about
Kalin's desire to revive Harlow's methods and Bennett's project could have
some positive effect. But it will take more than only a few people calling
and writing regularly; it will take many of us. The use of maternal
deprivation is a giant moral step backwards for the university. People
around the world who know what Harlow did to the baby monkeys are appalled
that such cruelty was ever allowed and that it was allowed to continue
unquestioned for so long. This remains an embarrassment to more than a few
at the university. See a bibiliography of Harlow's and his students'
publications here.

The Chair of the oversight committee ultimately responsible for approving
Kalin's and Bennett's methods is Dr. Robert Streiffer. He is the Chair of
the College of Letter and Sciences Animal Care and Use Committee. He teaches
philosophy and bio"ethics". It isn't outside the realm of possibility that
by focussing our attention on him that something might be done to stop
Bennett or even send her packing. With enough pressure, maybe Kalin wouldn't
be allowed to begin ripping babies from their mothers' arms.

For the time being, we are encouraging people to call and to write to
Robert Streiffer. Tell him that bringing maternal deprivation back to the
UW-Madison is a giant ethical step backwards. Ask him to do everything in
his power to stop this and to bring the matter to the attention of the
entire campus community. Many people will be shocked to learn that the
university has knowingly and willingly chosen to return to its very dark
past by reviving and embracing the cruel methods pioneered by Harry Harlow.

Fair Use Notice: This document, and others on our web site, may contain copyrighted
material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owners.
We believe that this not-for-profit, educational use on the Web constitutes a fair use
of the copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law).
If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use,
you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.